Nature Communications (Oct 2018)

Rifampicin can induce antibiotic tolerance in mycobacteria via paradoxical changes in rpoB transcription

  • Jun-Hao Zhu,
  • Bi-Wei Wang,
  • Miaomiao Pan,
  • Yu-Na Zeng,
  • Hesper Rego,
  • Babak Javid

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-06667-3
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 9, no. 1
pp. 1 – 13

Abstract

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The antibiotic rifampicin inhibits transcription by targeting RpoB, a bacterial RNA polymerase subunit. Here, Zhu et al. show that certain cells in mycobacterial populations can continue to grow and divide in the presence of rifampicin due, paradoxically, to rifampicin-induced upregulation of the rpoB gene.